Print shops are typically medium or large scale facilities capable of supplying printing services to meet a variety of customer demands. For example, print shops are often used to print documents for mass-mailing (e.g., customer bills, advertisements, etc.). Because print shops engage in printing on a scale that is hard to match, their customer base is usually varied. Print shop customers may therefore include both large institutional clients (e.g., credit card companies and banks), and small customers (e.g., small businesses and churches).
Print shops are generally arranged to print incoming jobs from customers in a way that is economical, yet fast. Thus, print shops often include a number of high-volume printers capable of printing incoming jobs quickly and at high quality. Print shops also typically include post-printing devices that are used to process the printed documents of each job (e.g., stackers, staplers, cutters, binders, etc.). Print shops may also provide digital/web publishing, e-mail, or other multimedia services to customers. Because print shops serve a variety of customers, they are often tasked with processing jobs that have varying printing formats, delivery dates, and media requirements. Print shops therefore often use a centralized print server that coordinates activity between printers and other devices of the print shop.
Customers submit their print jobs to print shops in a variety of formats. Along with the print data itself, a print job may include a job ticket describing what the customer wants (e.g., deliverable products, deadlines, e-mail blasts, etc.). For example, a customer may request that the print shop publish the print data to a web page and receive three copies of a printed document made from the print data. Customers may communicate their requests for services to the print shop in different ways. For example, a customer may use a Web-to-Print application that generates an XML or JDF file for the print shop, or a customer may simply telephone a print shop operator to request print shop services.
As jobs are received at a print shop, each job ticket may include different services requested by different customers. To perform services requested by customers, a print shop performs a set of print shop activities. For example, to print a bound document, a print shop may engage in activities such as “pre-flight” review of print data, printing the document, post-print binding the document, physically shipping the document to the customer, and billing the customer. A customer's requested services can vary with each incoming job, and print shop devices and personnel perform different activities to process incoming jobs having different requested services. However, deciding the specific activities to perform for incoming print data is often a time consuming process.
In order to address this issue, operators of a print shop may use workflow systems that dictate an order of activities to perform for incoming jobs. These workflow systems define activities that are used to process different types of incoming print jobs. Unfortunately, workflow systems are often time-intensive because they require the generation and maintenance of many individual workflows that are each targeted to a specific type of print job. If a print job enters the print shop and does not match a predefined workflow, an error may occur and the workflow system may be unable to process the incoming job. Thus, these workflow systems may require a print operator to define workflows for each type of incoming print job that could potentially enter the print shop.
Installing a workflow system in a print shop environment is also a complicated and time consuming process, because each print shop is likely to use a different combination of software, hardware, and personnel to perform similar activities. For example, the activity of “print” may be performed with a desktop printer at one print shop, while “print” may be performed with a high-volume continuous-form printer at another print shop. The hardware, software, and personnel used to perform print shop activities may be referred to in general as print shop resources. Additionally, the various print shop resources may communicate with the print shop using different communication protocols, and may or may not be configured to report their capabilities to the print shop. Thus, installation programs for workflow systems often ask a print operator a large number of configuration questions in order to determine the types of print shop resources that exist at the shop, as well as the configuration of the resources at the print shop. The number of questions asked may be prohibitively time consuming (e.g., thousands of questions), and print operators therefore desire methods for reducing the time spent initializing workflow systems in a print shop environment.